


The downfall of the great Apollo

by KweenKevin



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Brief mention of apollo/Hyacinthus, apollo centered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29218635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KweenKevin/pseuds/KweenKevin
Summary: An Apollo centered ficI have no explanationI wanted to write sad apollo, okay????
Relationships: Apollo & Artemis (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Apollo/Hyacinthus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	The downfall of the great Apollo

**Author's Note:**

> TW: MENTIONS OF RAPE AND TORTURE/ABUSE

They come to him in his dreams, taunting his memories, trying to get them to come out from where he locked them in a vault in his mind. They try to tear him down completely, try to break him, piece by piece, until all that's left is his mind, screaming, fighting against itself, trying to get free from it's own shackles.

He can't remember how he got to this point. 

He remembers beating the Python, being a hero. He remembers chasing after Daphne, entertaining young Hermes, taking care of his cows, long days with Hyacinthus, basking in the sun, their feet in the stream, their lips kissing, their hearts beating harder than ever before. 

He remembers evenings spent taunting his sister, remembers laughing with her until they both couldn't breathe, until the night turned into day, turned back into night, turned into gods know what time it is, but it didn't matter back then, because he was with her, and he was happy.

Now, as Apollo lays down in bed, staring at his ceiling, he wishes she were by his side. 

But all there is are the memories of his father, of losing the love of his life, of tears streaming down his face, and of events he can't bear to name, because naming them would make them real, and then he'd have to admit that the Great Apollo hasn't been great in oh so long… if he's being honest, he stopped being Great years, centuries, eons again… 

The worst was after Hyacinthus left his hands. 

He cried for years, sang songs about the great loss of his eternal love, wrote poems painful enough to make everyone cry. Yeah, when Hyacinthus died, a part of the sungod broke, and he never bothered to fix it…

His father got sick of his eternal moping, got fed up with his drama, and sent him to earth for the first time. 

He arrived in a little village in Ithaka.

He remembers the way the sun shone bright through the leaves, as if taunting him, making fun of him. Helios often liked to do that…

There, in a puddle, he broke a piece of him. His golden hair, his sun kissed skin, his beautiful hands, and his majestic being, all gone and broken, replaced by a young-ish face, dirty brown curls unevenly cut, eyes of troubled water, the body of a starved boy.

He spent his days working in the fields. The sun shone down on him and the other boys working alongside him, and he was forced to forget about his sadness, in favor of focusing on surviving. He got bread for every meal, and worked from sunrise to well after sunset, but it was fine. The days were bearable, if not sometimes pleasurable…

It were the nights that were really the most difficult.

For the first few months, he was troubled by dreams stained with that holy laugh, the smile that would have him drop to his knees within a second.

But then, there was a night where he was restless, and just staring at the sky, watching his sister cross the night sky, when suddenly the door to his little room opened, and his master came in.

"You've been lying to me", he claimed. "You owed me the knowledge of your godly hood", came then, followed by, "so I'm entitled to do this". Apollo tuned out the words after his master pushed him down on the bed, and climbed on top of him. As he did the next evening. And the next. And the rest of the evenings that awaited his leave.

It was only when he was retelling this story to his sister, once back on mount olympus, that he realized what happened. 

Never again did any of his masters get so bad. Or maybe he just tuned all of it out.

He remembers thinking it couldn't get worse, being stuck on earth, as a mortal, as a slave.

He remembers the irony of that when, the next time Father punished him, it came in the form of darkness.

A dark room, an invisible fire searing away at his godly hood, until all that was left of him was a crumpled version of the being he once was, starving, begging, crying.

It usually lasted only a month or two, maybe three, but when he was in that room, all sense of time left his being. 

The fire burned for ages and ages, his cries absorbed by the walls, the darkness settling deep in his chest.

The worst of it was afterwards, when he stayed in his house, not coming out for days, and Artemis got mad at him for not telling her where he's disappearing to, and for making her worry.

He had wanted to cry, to yell, to break down and tell her everything, tell her what their father has been doing to him, but he knows the innocence she still held deep inside her, and he couldn't bear to break her the way Zeus broke him.

After that time… he can't tell anymore. Stuff happened. He stopped pulling the sun, let helios pick up the job again. He stopped going to godly meetings. He stopped leaving his home, stopped eating, stopped talking, just spent his days staring at his hands, wondering where the great Apollo had gone, when he left, if he had ever existed…

  
  


One day, he woke up, and his hand was leaving his body. The next day his whole arm was gone. Slowly, he was being forgotten, turning back into essence, back to Tartarus… 

One day, he might write Artemis a note, explaining to her all that happened…

One day, he might be gone before that.

How did he get to this point…?


End file.
